Prime Minister, on behalf of all the civil servants attending today’s conference, let me thank you for your remarks. The civil servant who drafted them did a fine job. It was good of you to come, as you put it, to “celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Northcote-Trevelyan report”, when so many others seem content to celebrate this important date quietly at home.

I’m sure that I speak for everyone in being grateful for your kind remarks about the performance of civil servants and your unspoken gratitude for the way we have developed many initiatives for which you have become famous. We are impressed at how much you remembered, given that you never have a note taken at any meetings.

You paid tribute to the way the Service ensured that “the transition to new Labour after 18 years of Conservative Government was achieved with remarkable ease”. I cannot let this observation pass without paying tribute to the contribution you made to the transition by deciding not to change any of the policies of the outgoing Government.

We noted too your sympathy that we in the Civil Service have to “handle some of the most difficult, most intractable and least comfortable people”, but you will be pleased to know that we are learning how to cope with the Chancellor and wish you all the best trying to do the same.

How we laughed at your amusing assertion that there was a heavy dose of truth in the Sir Humphrey parody. In the same spirit, let me assure you that Sir Humphrey would be impressed by your own ability to delay and disguise decisions by meaningless paragraphs full of jargon that are delivered with conviction.

Your programme for reform was really most entertaining, and naturally we will move with all deliberate haste to make it happen. You asked for a smaller, strategic centre. We have hired a number of people to look into how to do this and will bring in a large number of consultants.

We cannot, of course, employ fewer people. As you know, a paper was commissioned to explain why reducing Civil Service numbers was an extreme policy that would damage public services. Serendipitously this paper was then available to help ministers to attack the very misguided idea of a freeze. Perhaps the Prime Minister’s new policy objective could best be achieved by hiring shorter and thinner people. It is always important to find a new way to measure a change that has not happened.

Finally, he commented that there is “an intellectual ingenuity in parts of the Service that is remarkable”. He will find, as he tries to implement reform in our realm, how absolutely true this is.